Elixir in the Type System Quadrant

Programming languages are created with different kinds of type systems. When “Thinking Elixir”, it is helpful to know where Elixir sits in the Type System Quadrant and where that is relative to the language you are coming from. Beyond coming from OO, you may also be coming from a different area of the Type System…

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VS Code Broken for Elixir

Broken for Elixir - VS Code

You tried using VS Code for Elixir development. You tried out the ElixirLS extension for code insight and code completion. However, the ElixirLS extension kept crashing and never worked for you. This post can help you diagnose the issue and fix it. Let’s get you back on the productive path with your Elixir development. What’s…

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Install Elixir using asdf

Install Elixir using asdf

There are a number of ways to install Elixir. However, to get the best experience, there are some non-obvious things you need to pay attention to. Here I’ll walk you through how to do this on MacOS and Linux using the asdf version manager project. Why is this important? Many people (myself included) have unknowingly…

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Elixir in VS Code

Visual Studio Code has become a very popular code editor. If you need a code editor for working with Elixir and you don’t already have one in mind, then I suggest giving VS Code a try. This post walks you through setting it up for Elixir development. Elixir development extensions There are many Elixir plug-ins…

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Creating Your First Mix Project

Creating an Elixir mix project is really easy. A mix project provides some basic structure, sets up a unit testing framework, and can grow with you. When Elixir is installed, it registers a mix command. I create a new project named playing with the command mix new playing. This is what happens: There are two…

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Running an Elixir File as a Script

Elixir is able to run “scripts” or files that are compiled into memory (not on disk) and executed. This is helpful when experimenting with larger Elixir code snippets. This is also helpful if you just want to occasionally run one-off scripts to perform some work and exit. File: my_test_script.exs To execute the file, from a…

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